Google, the company which has conscripted everyone on the internet to be its Web 2.0 free-content providers, has decided to give something back. The firm will spend $10m - almost a thousandth of a year's ad revenues - to kickstart geothermal power.
According to Google:
The heat beneath the earth's surface is essentially an …

Go do it in Iceland*!

Given that the Icelandic currency has very recently tanked dramatically (think -40% in a quarter), giving then all the advantages of skilled recently-unemployed etc, plus their closeness to all manner of volcanism (remember Surtsey growing out of nothing), isn't that the obvious place? Like send the money now, before their bank recovers, and let them dig there (not too deep)?

(*not the supermarket, the country --- do they have a food store called "england"?)

And $10m will get them what exactly

As you say they're probably not taking it seriously. It could all be a publicity stunt, "look at how seriously we take environmental issues we're spending $10m on it" which will attract positive attention from the less intelegent who don't realise that Google probably spent more than that on strawberry muffins last week.

Lets be fair ten million bucks probably won't even drill you your first hole to 10km let alone go any further.

Hopefully the popular media will, rather than falling for the positive spin, find some "expert" who will accuse Google of endangering the planet by risking earthquakes or some such scaremongering.

Not exactly a fusion dream.

But on the topic of Geothermal Energy itself... it is extremely promising.

MIT wrote a very detailed article how EGS can work in United States.

You can find it in geothermals wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy

The long and short of it is that, is would be green energys silver bullet, exept for one problem. Actually getting down there where the heat is. Drilling is insanely expensive and thats what puts it off.

National Geographic featured a documentary on Geothermal Energy. And it mentioned a technology thats still under development, called a Flame Jet Drill .

If that can become sold commercially, it would solve the last problem with EGS.

Back in the 80's 8 geothermal plants powered the entire mass of San Francisco's power needs, producing more than two nuclear power stations.

Read MIT's article and look it up. Long term, Geothermal is the best answer there is.

Aaaargh!!

Downsides

"if geothermal worked it would be almost without downsides"

Apart from the fact that it might crack the entire planet in half, and/or create a new Volcano in an undesirable location and/or prematurely cool the earth's core, stopping its rotation; leading to catastrophic effects...

If the idea works ...

The little known plan...

Yes geo energy is there and in use but what Google should do is build it's own power plant. Just like Virgin Air is trying to do with it's new biodiesel jets, our G friends can lead the way with geo energy.

Besides doesn't Google need the money it'll earn to one day buy out or "silence" all competitors/protesters?

How does the water come back up ?

If you pump water out of the drill bit in the hope of causing mini-earthquakes, do you have to use smart water to tell it to come home once it warmed up ? Hopefully it will be kept away from the cold water coming down and it'll be shifted earth bound in a speedy fashion else it will have cooled down again at the surface pump.

This might be one of those "lets build the plant 10km underground, where the heat is" type of Hollywood plots. I'm sure the underground alien/molemen-hybrids won't mind us invading their patch.

RE Aaaargh!!

@Not exactly a fusion dream.

Spot on - about 10 years ago, someone did a geothermal proof of concept down in Cornwall. In the first year, they almost got enough electricity out to power the site (enough portakabin space for 4-5 people, a kettle, handful of computers etc). By the end of the second year, they had enough to power all the farms around them, plus 80% of the local villages demand. Maintenance and running costs and so-on were virtually zero.

But then you find out that they took advantage of a natural fissure in the rock and didn't have to do a lot of drilling to get there, and the project lead admitted that there were probably only 4 sites in the uk that "easy to set up", and none of them were much larger. So, it's the drilling...

For all those of you worried about the potential side effects (cooling the planetary core, causing earthquakes, or cooling hell), then it's worth pointing out that geothermal systems are essentially static in terms of volume and pressure and the heat recovered is insignificant compared with what is actually down there.

Humans have done a lot more geological damage by oil, mineral, gas and water extraction. There are some hints that our over-use of water aquifers may have slightly affected the odds of earthquakes occurring in some areas, but our dumping of CO2 and Nitrogen into the biosphere, deforestation and building programs are having a much more significant effect then powering the entire planet on geothermal ever would. Just don't build them really close to major fault lines, and they'll be fine.

Good idea, but...

"National Geographic featured a documentary on Geothermal Energy. And it mentioned a technology thats still under development, called a Flame Jet Drill ."

Yup indeed, plasma drilling is something that's being experimented with just now and has the potential ability to revolutionise drilling. Only problem is it's years away from being a viable technology.

The basic technology for geothermal tech (drilling and completing wells, fraccing, recovering hot fluids to surface) has been tried and tested in the oil industry for many years now, even in hot, deep reservoirs. I suspect the main issue will be with actually circulating and heating the water at a high enough rate up and down the hole to make it economically viable for the astronomical expenditure required up front for all this hi-tech kit (at least from a drilling perspective).

Hot Dry Rock

PV=nRT

Simple little physics equation.

As long as you have gravity, you will have "hot" rocks at a certain depth.

You are not drilling down to the mantel.

And if you didn't take high school physics, keeping volume constant, the greater the pressure, the greater the temperature. So the deeper you go, the greater the pressure on the rocks, so the greater the temperature.

Noddy's guide to geothermal

You drill two holes that almost meet a long way down. Drop some bombs down each hole to make some cracks. Some of the cracks will intersect, so when you pump cold water down one hole, you get hot water out of the other one.

The good news 1: we will have cheap fusion centuries before we make a measurable difference to the earth's core temperature.

Good news 2: Hot pressurised water dissolves silica, which comes out of solution inside the turbine. Over time, if you clean out the silica regularly, you can make a really huge sand castle. (What do you mean? Why don't you want a huge sand castle in your backyard?)

Good news 3: Rock is not all that thermally conductive. If you pump out heat too quickly, the temperature falls in a small area around the expensive holes you just drilled. To get more energy, you could drill more holes or drill further apart and use much bigger bombs! Where is Guy Fawkes when you need him?

Bad news: The UK is on a thick bit of the earth's crust. You would have to drill 20km here to find a useful amount of heat. Like most sources of renewable energy, you are better of building elsewhere. If you are worried about buying oil and gas from Arabs and Russians, you can get some hydroelectric from Wales, some wind from Scotland, solar from ... Libya, geothermal from Iceland or nuclear from France.

Geo-chemical

Is Google drilling in Mountain View? They can probably suck up enough leaked gasoline, chip fab solvents, and garbage methane to power generators. Silicon Valley has vent pipes sticking out of the ground to prevent explosions and ground water contamination. The business park I'm in now has arrays of ground vents, methane alarms, and a strict "no outside fires" rule.

Its all back to front....

The problem is not drilling holes, or even making more power for more people to use; what we need is a human cull! If we reduce ours numbers to match ALL of our resources then we can manage just fine..... lets start with those who keep pushing for bigger,faster and better!

Absolutely, Fred old top

Geothermal Heat Sources

Some geothermal heat sources draw heat from the mantle ("hot spots") but most of it is generated from tectonic plate movements. In many cases, and specifically in Australia, the heat in question comes from rocks with diffuse radioactive material which decays over time generating 200+ deg. C - that's the heat to be extracted, typically 3-5km from the surface. There are NO ISSUES AT ALL with leaking radioactivity, as some (dare I say, pro-fossil fuel lobbyist) people erroneously state.

As much as folk* will want to pontificate about this and that, the main point is, as with fusion, clean coal, wind and large-scale solar, etc., it needs to be demonstrated on a suitable scale. And, actually, that's probably not far off.

"Why hasn't it been done before?" is a question asked often. The answer is mostly that the political and the economic environment necessary to attract R&D and investment capital has not been favourable. That is now changing.

Hawaii

Once again

Looking for a solution on the massive scale.

The heat pump has been around for a long time. Rather than generating massive amounts of power in a central location and then using an expensive network to distribute it, wouldn't it be better that each premise generated its own energy?

But then of course, they couldn't charge us a fortune for supplying it!

Like fusion?

Geothermal ... requires the right geology. In some places it will work. In many places it won't be economic to drill deep holes. In some places it won't be safe (will precipitate earth tremors).

Fusion ... well, ITER's costing an arm and a leg (USD9e9 ? something like that). Personally, I cannot see this as an economic solution without some serious engineering breakthroughs and enormous cost reductions.

Iceland again

There's enough free geothermal energy in Iceland, both near the surface and even more under it to supply Europe and North America for ever - given the high voltage direct current transmission technologies being worked on and trialled for the transfer of solar energy from the Sahara to Europe.

The water pumped up to the surface in Reykjavik frinstance is so hot (due to pressure - over 120C and probably more - can't remember offhand) that it needs to be diluted considerably with cold water to be usable by us lot in baths etc.

Similar colossal supplies would easily be able to power other continents - and to supply even more energy for more research on other methods of energy production, leading to a basically infinite supply of energy for all humanity. This would kill off private ownership of resources and commodity production for good.

Turbines?!?! Such old tech...

Ever heard of a Stirling Engine guys! Sunpower are getting some really good rates from these now. and with Nasa considering them (Testing at Cleveland whatever its called this week) they are looking like a really feasible method of converting Heat to Electricity without wasting vast amounts of heat to condesing cooling. (and putting it directly into the Atmosphere!) Stirling Engines are perfect wherever a temerature differential already exists.

@Tim Spence - Cold Earth...

If your frighted of that just try and work out what the moon is doing to us.. Each Day is becoming longer as the Moons Pull is slowly braking the earths spin (Tidal Breaking) This is because the Energy of the Tide Comes from the Earths Rotational Momentum! Fortunatly there is a lot of Energy There! however one day the earth will become graviationlly Locked to the Moon (like the moon is to us, always the same side faces us - it isnt just a coincedence!)

Unlimited Resource

"The heat beneath the earth's surface is essentially an unlimited resource"

Um, actually no.

In the Rotorua district of North Island New Zealand, this technique has been used for many many decades. Rotorua is an area of exceptional geothermal activity and draws hordes of tourists as a result.

Unfortunately it turns out that the constant injection of cool water needed to produce steam into both domestic heating systems and the local geothermal power station has cooled the area sufficiently that geothermal activity at some of the major tourist puller sites has started to die down.

Thanks for nothing

Thanks to the stupid, sniggering schoolboy subtitle, I can't share this otherwise interesting and well-written article with approximately 50% of humanity even though they're not in the Jolt-swilling, pizza-scarfing, job-dwelling, gadget-obsessed, hip-and-with-it, totally happening fabgear demographic that you probably tout to your advertisers.

Don't you Register people have mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts etc.?

Cooling down the earth?

Even if you covered every square inch of this earth with geothermal power stations, you would make an insignificant little dent in the earths core temperature.

The entire mass that we and all life lives on (the crust) is only 1% mass of the earth. Its tiny. The boundary of the crust is only 10km down, then another 50km if you include the tectonic plates. That temperature alone is 1,000 °C (1,800 °F).

When the mantle reaches the core it gets even hotter. 4,000 °C (7,200 °F) .

Sorry for the science lesson, but theres simply no way we can "drain" the heat of the earth to nothing.

Sure EGS is expensive. But Nuclear power stations are too and they are far more dangerous.